The Four Main Types of Spam
This is the major form of spam that is running rampant over the internet. Often called 'BotNets' or 'SpamBots', hackers and spammers exploit vulnerable operating systems with viruses or programs, often hidden in images or web pages on the internet. Often the only thing you notice is that your computer runs a little slower. This can be the most dangerous types of spam.
How We Stop This Spam
Ever signed up for a 'stock alert', 'free listing', 'free horoscope' or buy something online, and all of a sudden your inbox is full of 3rd party email marketing, offering 10% off everything from shoe stores to electronics? This is a multi-billion dollar industry. And even worse, some just take stolen email lists, hacked databases, and other methods to get your email address.
How We Stop This Spam
You know that the ONLY people who would 'hack' a server, are not going to be sending you anything trust worthy. This is another way for them to send you viruses, malware, and ransomware, or links to what might be illegal services. Unfortunately, many system administrators simply do not keep their security up to date, programmers make mistakes, or hackers find out a vulnerability before the public does. But there are ways to identify these servers.
How We Stop This Spam
This isn't really about just the big providers such as Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc, this could happen to any email provider. However, the largest free email providers also have so many email accounts, spammers like to compromise them first. There are those spammers who just signup for free email accounts intentionally for spamming, but they also 'hack' email account passwords as those accounts generally have built up a bit of trust.
How We Stop This Spam
The makers of MagicSpam have been working with email servers for almost 15 years,
and long ago learned that is the wrong way to go about it. Now that spam is over 98%
of all the email traffic, mostly from Trojans and Bots from around the world, why not
simply block them? The only way to do that properly is to actually be "part" of the email
server, so you can identify spam at the edge during the SMTP handshake phase. We call
this "Mail Server ProfilingTM"
Trojans And Bots - How We Stop This Spam
MagicSpam's primary line of defense is to reject anything we know that should NOT be the source of email. And we can do this at the connection level, by using our patented BMS technology to compare the IP Addresses to lists of IP Addresses that should not be sending email. For instance, IP Addresses on dynamic IP ranges, IP Addresses with no reverse DNS, and IP Addresses with a reverse DNS that we know means there are no email servers. This alone can block over 50% of all attackers, and these are the worst types. The ones that often carry ransomware, viruses, or advertise scams or fake offerings like cheap 'blue pills'. Technically, the stats would be higher, but we also add rate limiter and auto blocking features when we recognize a 'botnet' or 'trojan' to stop repeated attempts more efficiently. Bot operators have no control over (and cannot forge) IP Addresses or DNS.
Email Marketing - How We Stop This Spam
Wouldn't it be nice if you could say, I don't want any more marketing material? MagicSpam takes a multi-faceted approach. For the worst types, the ones that use stolen email databases or throw away domains, we try to simply block them. Most other 'spam filtering' devices and methods try to identify by content, but these people are experts at this. It is a multi-billion dollar business, and they have paid people to test against filtering rules, and keep themselves off blacklists. We simply approached it differently. MagicSpam uses it's patented BMS technology to test against a database of companies, networks, and IP(s) who do email marketing, and the hosting companies that allow them to operate. And while extremely effective, sometimes one mans' spam is another mans reading material. Or there may be that one piece of email marketing that you do want, but not all the other 'junkmail' that the same company also tries to deliver. However some email marketing companies intentionally make it difficult to tell one sender from another, obfuscating the information. They get paid by the message they deliver, so if they can get you to allow one, it helps them deliver all the rest. Because of this, you might want to just 'tag' these messages instead of 'blocking'. Of course, there are even some well known companies using inferior emailing methods, so their can always be a 'fringe' case, which is why we allow you to 'whitelist' just the sender you want.
Compromised Servers - How We Stop This Spam
One of the methods used of course, is to first look at the IP Address to see if it has been reported before. MagicSpam uses it's BMS technology to look at a database of known spammers, that is constantly being updated by a very large detection spam detection grid. But we also go further, by looking first to see if the server was ever configured properly as an email server. We also look for sending patterns and methods that are indicative of emails generated by compromised software. This may include things that the hacker has no control of, like DNS, relay information, etc. But also, they have general similar 'evil' purpose so we can check for typical attack vectors, attachment types, sender naming conventions and many other tools. In some of our advanced PRO versions, we can even check for content such as 'blue pill' scams, fake bank alerts, phishing methods and other similar goals.
Free Email - How We Stop This Spam
The title might be better called 'Compromised Accounts'. Generally the first thing they do is also hack your addressbook, or take a list of every person that you have ever emailed or received email from. You are more likely to open an email from a trusted person right? Now, while of course these companies are supposed to control the bad stuff from being sent from their servers, there isn't a real motivator for them when they get 'too big to block'. But there is also the sheer technical challenge of dealing with very large numbers. And spammers are smarter than ever. They now often 'piggy back' on real email accounts, just sending small amounts from each account. But when they manage to 'hack' millions of them, then even a small amount adds up'. How do you stop them? Well, the onus is really on the sending company, so our Spam Auditing works through several channels to inform operators. We also have designed MagicSpam so that it can co-exist with content filtering software. But by stopping most spam before it gets to the filters, allows them to be much more effecient and accurate. And in our PRO versions, we also have released our proven 'filter signatures' developed from our work with hundreds of ISPs, Telcos' and seeing the activity to millions of email accounts. We can 'see' patterns that indicate compromised accounts from that big data.
